Why
by Xanderlike
Summary: Even after Crait, Rey has not given up on Ben Solo. Here are some of the reasons why
1. Wreckage

Rey spent her life finding value in the things that other people threw away.

She learned earlier that the greater the risk, the higher the reward. She was too alone, too small, too weak, to scavenge in the safe places. If she _did_ find something of value, others would take it from her. If she were to eat- if she were to _survive_ \- she had to go where the others wouldn't.

And those were dangerous places. Places where death came easy- more than once she found the bodies of those who had gone before her. One misstep, one miscalculation, and her rotting corpse would be found by someone else some other day.

Over time, she came to _crave_ the danger. It made what she found so much more valuable to her. She had to give up her treasures once she found them- otherwise she would die- but each piece of scrap she found was proof that she was stronger than Jakku, stronger than that what tried to kill her.

Kylo Ren is the most beautiful, most dangerous wreck, she has ever seen.

There are endless chasms of self-loathing. Jagged peaks of rage. Dead falls of unpredictability.

To journey into that wreckage is to risk certain death.

It killed Han Solo.

But Rey … Rey persists.

The rewards seem so meager at first. The bronze wire of his true name that he accepts from no one else but her. The silver fragment of loneliness. But it's when she finds that gold pebble of empathy- tiny, so tiny that even on Jakku it would be considered worthless- that she feels the flush of success.

He promised her that she was not alone. He _cared_. He cared for _her_.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, she is extracting Ben Solo from the wreckage of Kylo Ren. It will take time- and there will be times when she will lose something of what she has gained so far- but she's certain that she will succeed.

Rey was always the best scavenger on Jakku.

And Ben Solo is the treasure she will get to keep.


	2. Passion

It's not until she lets Poe Dameron kiss her that Rey begins to understand how much Ben Solo- or Kylo Ren or the dangerous mixture of them both he can be sometimes- has claimed her.

There had been a Resistance mission- there's always a mission because their need is so great- and they had escaped by the skin of their teeth. Laughing together in the rickety old ship they had taken to this Force-forsaken planet- they had looked at each other.

Poe had a question in his eyes as he leaned closer to her.

She answered by closing her eyes and tilting her face slightly.

And for the first time in her life, she felt a man's kiss.

Poe was a handsome man. Poe was a _good_ man. Poe was everything that Ben was not. He was the hero of the story; the one that Rey was _supposed_ to love.

But all that Rey felt when Poe's lips touched hers was _guilt._

 _"Traitor!"_ a voice hissed in her ear. She wanted it to be Ben's, but it wasn't.

It was _hers._

Poe saw it in her eyes when he ended the kiss. "It was worth a try." He kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry."

"It's not you. It's me." She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all- but she cried instead.

"Rey, I'm sorry," Poe wrapped her into a hug.

 _This_ she could accept. "You didn't do anything wrong, Poe. I just wanted to see …" _I wanted to forget him. I wanted to stop dreaming of him. I wanted to stop_ _ **wanting**_ _him._ "Do you forgive me?"

"Of course."

And he held her as she cried herself to sleep.

She woke up later to find Ben Solo- or Kylo Ren- watching her as she slept in another man's arms.

She gasped, her body spasming in fear.

Poe woke up, blaster in hand. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Ben Solo or Kylo Ren- she never knew which he would be until he spoke- said nothing. Did nothing. He simply looked at her.

Force … she saw that he had been crying.

"Nothing," she told Poe. "I just had a nightmare. Go back to sleep. I'm going to check the auto pilot."

Poe murmured a sleepy acceptance and drifted back off to sleep.

She walked to the front of the ship, Ben/Kylo trailing behind her like a ghost. She sits down in the chair and he stands watching her. "I'm sorry-"

 _Why is she sorry? This man murdered his father- he's a killer many times over. He broke her heart- she had come to give him_ _ **everything**_ _\- and it hadn't been enough._

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

It's Ben again. Oh, Force. It's Ben. Kylo's rage she could deal with right now- she hoped for it. Deserved it. She wanted him to shriek _"Traitor"_ at her till her ears popped. Kylo's anger she could deal with- but Ben's pain, his loneliness, was the light saber she could never parry.

"I didn't feel anything for him. It was… empty."

"I know."

"It is the Force? Is it because he's not Force sensitive?" She didn't know what would hurt more; the idea that she would never be able to know this _feeling_ with anyone but Ben or the thought that Ben had once known it with someone else.

"I don't know. No one ever told me." He closed his eyes. "I feel it too. After Crait- I tried to take a woman to bed."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?"

She didn't want to imagine some perfectly experienced woman in Kylo Ren's bed (and it would have to be Kylo because _Ben_ would never do that to her) giving him what Rey never had. She didn't want to think of some woman making him forget her."I guess not." The next words were deliciously painful- her punishment for kissing Poe, she thought- "What happened?"

"Nothing. I felt nothing. It was like kissing a droid."

"Did you-?"

"No."

She wanted to cry with relief. He was still _hers._

"I'm sorry, Rey. I'm sorry that you can't be with the one you want." He took a shuddering breath. "The one who can make you happy. The right choice."

She placed her fingers to his lips to silence him. "This. This touch. What we're doing right now. It makes me feel more alive than all of Poe Dameron's kisses. You're what I need, Ben."

He's not what she wanted. Force knows her life would be so much simpler if she could imagine one where Ben Solo couldn't break her heart with one look. Her life would be so much easier if his face wasn't the one that she saw when she closed her eyes.

But he was, and she did, and her heart would break a million times and she knew that she would let him back in again each and every time.

This was passion, and nothing in her life would ever match the sweet torture of Ben Solo's heart in her hands.


	3. Monster

"I'm a monster."

He's said it to her so many times she's lost count. It's his reminder to her- to _himself-_ when the Bond brings them dangerously close to forgetting who they are to each other- who they _have_ to be to each other.

This time … this time she has no strength in her left. No words of defiance or hope. Nothing.

Nothing but tears.

And when he approaches her- when one black gloved hand reaches out to touch her cheek as though she was the most precious thing he had ever seen he says something else.

"You make me wish I weren't."

And then he's gone.

"I know," she whispers into the darkness. "But you're _my_ monster."


	4. The Power of WantingBeing Wanted

Sooner or later, everyone asks her what it's like to be a Jedi.

She's forced herself to develop patience as she tries to explain what she does, how she does it. The things she _can't_ do are as important as what she _can_ do. (She can't make Kylo Ren Ben Solo again. She can learn to live with the dull ache that's been in her heart ever since she closed the hatch of the _Millennium Falcon_ on him.) And whenever it comes up, she hopes that on one will ask _that_ question; the one she always has to lie about.

But it seems like someone always does.

"What's your favorite power? What's your favorite thing you can do?"

She puts them off with a smile, says that everything is important to her. And then when she's alone, she allows herself to think of what her favorite power really _is:_

Her power over Ben Solo.

(She refuses to call him Kylo Ren now. "Ben" is her claim on him; the name he accepts from no one else but her. She wonders if he realizes what it means to her that she lets him use his birth name long after he's turned his back on everyone else who ever cared about him.)

Her power over him is something even deeper, more primal, than even the Bond they still share.

(And that neither of them want to break. They may pretend- lie to each other- but they both know that they would sooner die than lose the link that Snoke or the Force or blind chance has spun between them.)

He's the most powerful man in the Galaxy.

He can devastate armies with his sheer mastery of the Force. He can destroy planets with the First Order's mighty fleet. He can bring death to _billions._

And Rey of Jakku- Rey the amateur Jedi- Rey the Scavenger- Rey the _Nobody_ \- can bring him down to his _knees_ with a single word.

Her touch- the merest _flicker_ of her touch- can make him turn on the master he swore to serve.

Her eyes can lead him into rebellion … put him at war with himself.

Her tears can make him _beg._

She knows this power is no gift from the Force- its something else. She sees the way he looks at her- and it shakes her sense of self more than anything else ever has or ever will.

He's offered her a throne. He's offered her himself. His naked soul is in his eyes when he looks at her- a desire that is a tangle of physical and emotional passion that takes her breath away.

 _Love_ somehow seems a paltry word for what Ben Solo feels for her.

She knows that things could have been different between them. She knows that she said the wrong words to convince him to come back with her. A slight difference in what she had said- a slight confession on her part- and Ben Solo would be in her life (and quite possibly in her bed) right now.

And sometimes, she thanks (or curses) the Force that Ben did _not_ say the words that would have brought her over to his side. She knows it was a near thing.

And the ironic thing- the thing that still brings her to tears- is that what she should have said to him is _exactly_ what he should have said to her:

 _I want you._


	5. He only sings for her

"Happy Life Day, Ben," Rey said to him when the Bond called him to her on that particular day.

His eyes full of memories, Ben had still whispered, "Happy Life Day, Rey."

"It's a Wookie holiday... but I guess you know that." She felt her face flush red. Ben had grown up with Chewie as part of his life- _of_ course he knew what Life Day was.

"I do." His eyes were filled with memories. "You're in the _Falcon_ , aren't you?"

"Yes." Had he finally learned how to see her surroundings as well. "How can you tell?"

"I can see the bulkhead where you're touching it. I scratched my name on it when I was six years old. You can still see it."

Rey turned her head and right over her shoulder was Ben's name. "Maybe that's why I feel so at home here," she murmured more to herself than her companion.

"If you're celebrating Life Day, why aren't you with the others? Or has the song already been sung?"

"I left early. So many people ..."

He smiled.

"... and the one I wanted to be here with me isn't."

"My father." Rey had seen Han as the father she had never had. Of course on a day like this she would miss him terribly ….

Rey shook her head. "Not Han." There was an ache when she thought of the older man and the life he had offered her, but the one she was truly missing was ... " _Y_ ou."

Ben closed his eyes. He could practically feel the hum of the _Falcon's_ engines. For a brief moment, he imagined what it would be like to be _home_ again … to hold Rey's hand in reality … to be able to see something other than shame in his mother's eyes … to have Chewie look at him the way he had when he was young … "It's too late for me, Rey. I can't go back now. I'm-"

"Don't. Please don't. I don't want to hear that tonight." She didn't want to hear him say he was a monster- because it was and wasn't true, and sometimes she wasn't sure what she wanted to believe of him. "Don't spoil the moment."

"All right." He gave in to her again, as he almost always had. If only he had given in one the thing that kept them divided … "I suppose I can give you the only Life Day present I can … all things considered."

"You're going to take your shirt off for me?" she teased … but part of her was _hoping_...

"No. I'll sing for you."

"You can sing?"

"Probably not. It's been a long time since I tried." He cleared his throat and then looked at her. " _We celebrate a day of peace ..."_

The song was … not good.

It was all Rey could do to avoid laughing at the lyrics …

But the singer … the fact that Kylo Ren, fearsome Knight of Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, would sit with her and _sing_ for her … and _only_ for her … took her breath away.

He was not the best singer she had ever heard, but he was not unpleasant to listen to. And the fact that he did this for _her …_

 _No one_ had ever sang for Rey before.

"It sounds better in the original _Shyriiwook_ _," Ben said when he was finished. "Dad …_ _ _Han__ _... used to make me sing it with Mom every Life Day."_

 _A tear escaped his eye …_

 _For Han? Rey wasn't sure that Ben had noticed- or that he even knew the answer if he_ _ _did__ _notice._

 _"Thank you," she said when he finished. "I just wish I had a gift for you."_

 _"Every moment with you is a gift, Rey."_

 _She blushed. "Ben …"_

 _"Rey ..."_

 _They were moving towards each other as if the Force itself were giving them a push …_

 _And of course the link faded just before their lips touched._

 _"Maybe next year, Ben. Maybe next year." And Rey closed her eyes and began to sing. "_ _ _A day that brings the promise that one day we'll be free ..."__

 _ _Author's Note: Leia's Life day song is called "A Day to Celebrate." She sang it on the Star Wars Holiday special. Even if it was permitted, I would not subject you to the full lyrics. I am not THAT cruel. :D__


	6. He Dreams Of Her

"I see you in my dreams."

He was there again.

"Oh? What sort of dreams?" Part of her doesn't want to know. Dreams of power, perhaps. Where she comes to him and rules beside her. Or maybe … _other_ dreams.

She's had a few of those about him. More often than she wants to admit.

"You're a child. Someone is dragging you by the arm. You're watching your parents leave."

The tears came to her eyes. "You're cruel."

"Yes. Sometimes. But never to you." He reached out with a hand as if to touch her cheek.

But it's the gloved hand of Kylo Ren and she angrily stepped back from him. "No. You don't get to do that. You gave up the chance to do that."

"I know."

Was there regret in his voice?

And he was gone.

..*..

Days later, he was back.

"I went to Jakku."

"What did you do?" She was afraid. She did not have many fond memories of Jakku, but there were people there … innocent people who did not deserve to be murdered …

"I removed Unkar Plutt. I asked the Naboo government to set up a sanctuary there. I have placed Jakku under my personal protection. There will be no more little girls abandoned there. Someone will always be there to take care of them."

"Ben … Why?" Did he think that would convince her to join him? What if she said no? Would he destroy what he said he just created?

"I can't undo what was done to you there. What you lost. But maybe I can make sure your past means other people will have a brighter future." He wasn't the kind of man who smiled, but there was _something_ in his eyes. "And I want my dreams about you to be happy ones."

He was gone before she could ask him what he meant.


	7. Broken

They're both broken.

They're broken in different ways- their pieces _almost_ match up, but not quite. And it's this that has kept them from each other. She knows that. He knows that.

He was still in his mother's womb when Snoke started whispering to him. By the time his parents knew- by the time they had tried to do something- it had been too late. They already believed that he was a monster. Even his uncle- the legendary Luke Skywalker who had tamed Darth Vader himself- believed him beyond redemption.

He was a monster. He _had_ to be a monster. He had been told this so long, so often, that it had never even occurred to him to doubt it any longer.

He had been _alone_ all his life … alone physically because Snoke had never left him alone mentally. The other children were afraid of him- of his power, of his temper- of the things that he could do, and the things that he had done. His power had come to him too soon- he had been so strong so young that he had never had a chance to learn how to _be_ around other people … to pretend to be _normal_ for them.

Rey understands that because she's not _normal_ herself.

Even without the Force, she would never be normal … and she suspects that if she did _not_ have the Force the Resistance would probably have washed their hands of her long ago.

(Not Finn of course. Finn will never betray her. Finn will never abandon her. He came back for her. And yet … and yet there is Rose and she knows that Rose is what Finn _needs_. His own childhood was as strange as Rey's, as Ben's … but he had grown up with a group, with a purpose. The First Order had failed to indoctrinate him with their own dogma, but the lessons he had learned made him all the more dedicated to the Resistance cause.

Finn has found his purpose with the Resistance … his place with Rose. He cares for Rey- she knows that he does- but she knows that his loyalty is now divided and she may not be the choice he would make again.)

Because Rey was broken by her childhood just as surely as Ben Solo was by his. She had nursed the hope that her parents were coming back for her because it had kept her sane … gave her a reason to keep fighting. She had a dream of family, and that dream is what kept her alive.

But it also kept her in chains.

She learned to survive on Jakku … a child who had to raise herself because there was no one to do it for her. She learned how to fight … how to scavenge … how to protect herself and what belongs to her. She knows the Galaxy is so much larger than Jakku … but it's left her mark on her.

The others always give her a private cabin no matter how crowded the facilities. This isn't just do to her status as the "Last Jedi" … it's because they've seen her react without thinking … seen her break Kay Connix's arm the first- and only- night that someone had ever shared a cabin with her. She had been having a nightmare, and Kay had only wanted to help … but when Rey felt an unexpected hand touch her in the dark ….

Kay was lucky that it was just her arm that Rey had broken.

Poe himself had nearly had his hand impaled to the table the one- and only time- he had playfully tried to snatch food off Rey's tray. Only the pilot's extraordinary reflexes had kept him from suffering injury.

She hates when she does something like that … hates that she can _hurt_ people who care about her if she's not careful.

But she can't stop.

She kept herself alive by honing her survival instincts … and now she can't just _stop_ using them.

And so she sleeps alone in her cabin. She eats alone. She does her best to act like everyone else, but she knows that she's _different_ …

And so do they.

She's _broken._

She listens to as many stories as she can about their childhoods … about their brothers and sisters, grandparents … _parents_. She tries to imagine what it would be like to have people prepare your food for you … tuck you in at night … she tries to picture what it would be like to go to bed without worrying about how you would feed yourself the next day …

But she can't.

It's like watching a holo in a language she doesn't understand about a culture she's never heard of.

And the thing that _stings_ is that she knows that she _should_ understand. She should know these things because humans are supposed to raise their children … they are supposed to take care of their children. She should know these things … but she doesn't.

Because her parents had _sold_ her.

The feeling that this causes her … the _pain_ that can bring tears to her eyes … makes her heart _hurt_ so much that she just wants it to stop. She wants to forget … she wants to _pretend_ that she's like everyone else … that she had parents that gave a damn about her …

But she's not. And they didn't. And she can't lie to herself any more …

"Rey?"

He's there again … all in black with his pale face, and the eyes that can only be gentle for her.

They're alone … alone in her room.

"It hurts," she tells him finally.

"What?"

"Coming from nothing."

"Rey … I didn't mean that the way it sounded … I didn't mean to make you cry ..."

"I know … it's just that …." and she gestures at the door to the cabin. "I listen to them talk about family. Friends. And I wonder why my parents didn't love me … what was _wrong_ with me that they didn't ..."

"Rey … there wasn't anything wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you now." He kneels down beside her and she can see the sincerity in his eyes. "You're an amazing person. A _good_ person. Most people- _good_ people- would have loved to have you as a daughter." He smiled crookedly. "My parents would have traded me for you in a heartbeat."

"You don't believe that." She wanted to touch him. Force how she wanted to touch him. But she didn't. "Your parents loved you. Leia still loves you. After all- she still loves you."

"I know." He gave her that crooked smile. "But my parents would have loved to have a _normal_ child." He sighed. "I wonder sometimes. What my life would have been like if I had not been born Force sensitive. Perhaps I would have been the politician my mother wanted me to be … maybe my father would have taught me to be a smuggler ..." He sighed. "Maybe they would have _kept_ me."

"Maybe," Rey admits, and it's painful for both of them to do so. "But there is one thing that I know would be true if that was the case."

"What's that?"

"We probably never would have met." And this time she reached out and touched his face. "And I cannot imagine my life without you."

He smiled at her. "You're not alone ..."

No matter what. No matter what she did or did not understand. No matter why her parents had abandoned her … she was not alone.

"And neither are you."

They're both broken. And if things were only _slightly_ different, they could be broken together.

And for a moment … if only for a moment … they are.


End file.
